Her agent, Anne Alvares Correa, told the AP that Riva had been in a clinic after a long illness, identified in other reports as cancer. Jennifer Lawrence won the Best Actress award that year.

Riva had a steady stream of gigs until last summer (16), when she made a film, Alma, in Iceland.

French President Francois Hollande said via statement that the actress "deeply marked French cinema".

Riva got her start in 1959's Hiroshima Mon Amour, about a failing romance between a French actor and a Japanese architect. Ironically, her strict Italian father would later on greatly discourage Riva from pursuing acting as a career.

She also will appear on the big screen in "Paris Pieds Nus" (Paris Barefoot), being released in France in March.

Where you a fan of her work?

"I feel like I'm in sort of a fairy tale", the actress told USA Today. Over the course of her career, Riva worked with some of the most prominent directors in French and European cinema, with Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Melville, Georges Franju, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Michael Haneke all employing her talents.

Riva never married and had no children, telling the French newspaper Liberation in 2012 she had no desire to saddle herself with either. She was notorious for declining roles, preferring to take on challenging characters who differed from anyone she had played before, rather than sticking to more commercial offerings.

Working steadily from 1957 until her death this week, Riva eventually moved into roles that took on a surface air of matronliness, while never losing the unsafe subtlety lurking underneath. "Everybody knows there are very few roles for older actresses. I wasn't acting. I wasn't playing the part, that's the best way I can say it-I wasn't playing, I was being".